Outsiders

We immigrants in Monculi are doing quite well. We own our own houses, are employed, and make a stab at speaking the local language (and it is very local) as well as classical Italian, though the Albanians are much better at it than the rest of us as they benefit still from their excellent classical education back home under Mr Hoxa's regime.

Of course we all know our place. An example, from an in-law, in my kitchen, "Here, we don't chop onions like that, let me show you." That time, I had a knife in my hand. No-one could fault them for foolhardy risk-taking.

The intra- and infra-familial murders that go on in Italy are at such levels that I assumed that while personal it was merely a particular aim being taken at a foreign in-marrier, rather than a serious expression of cultural aggression; had I been Italian no doubt the aggressing would have taken a different form.

But when the Italians as a people and country are feeling threatened, it is clear that they will have not the slightest concern in expressing their fear and distress in a racialism that will both shake people from more politically correct environments, and provide an unwelcome model for those who have been restrained by social and legal constraints.

The immigrants in Monculi are accepted because we pay our way and try our best to cope with not being Italian. The poor, the weak, the excluded are going to have a bad time.